THE place to be this Sunday is undoubtedly the Millennium Stadium, Featherstone.
I’m making that assertion for a couple of reasons.
The first is that it’s a chance to get along to one of Rugby League’s most famous grounds in what is turning out to be something of a madcap year for the sport.
And another is that the occasion (the Women’s Rugby League’s Challenge Cup and Plate finals double-header) is taking place for the last time.
Illingworth and Siddal will contest the Challenge Cup final at 2.30pm in what could be a heated Halifax derby while the Plate final will see Batley meet Bronte at noon.
The first game will be refereed by Kieran Marno, whose touchjudges will be Darcie Howe and Esmai Wright.
The highly-experienced Neil Pascall will have the honour of officiating the last Challenge Cup final, and Christopher Hope and Glen Tillotson will have the flags.
It will be an emotional day, that’s for sure, and a sad one.
I’ve always felt that the WARL competition has been treated pretty badly by the Rugby Football League, which has never been slow to ride roughshod over a competition that was very much in place long before the RFL (or its professional clubs) showed any real interest in the female game.
Chair Steve Manning has pledged that WARL will bow out with a bang, and I’m sure he’s right.
It’s only a fiver admission, or £3 concessions this Sunday at Post Office Road (cash only, remember), so get along to the ground before noon to not only relish the on-field fare but to take in the stadium itself.
Hopefully Featherstone Rovers will be back on that famous sloping pitch in 2027.
Talking of the demise of WARL leads me to reflect on the end of the National Conference League, which dissolved itself late last month after having been effectively subsumed, and unwillingly, by the RFL’s National Community Rugby League drive.
The arguments about the rights and wrongs of this particular spat could rage on for months, perhaps years.
We’ll see, won’t we, but one aspect that occurs to me as the launch of the new venture, early next month, fast approaches is something that I don’t think has been previously voiced, not publicly anyway, by either the RFL or the NCL.
What’s taxing my mind is the fact that while it’s all well and good the RFL introducing a pyramid system for the men’s amateur game, through which a new team, for example, can see a clear pathway from a localised merit league to the National Premier Division, we’re not really comparing like for like where the NCL is concerned, are we?
It’s important, I think, to reflect that it was never part of the NCL’s minimum-standards criteria that membership should involve having a good team.
It was all about being a good club, which is a different thing, with important minimum standards including having two open-age teams and a strong youth and junior structure, together with a pitch with permanent perimeter fencing and a clubhouse adjacent to it. And, of course, a strong and well-established committee was always a must.
Some of those requirements admittedly went by the wayside in recent years (a reality that perhaps didn’t exactly help the NCL’s cause in its bitter skirmish with the RFL) but it may prove to be a mistake to now allow teams to reach the very top without the club infrastructure in place that made what I habitually termed the amateur game’s flagship league so strong.
As evidence that membership of the NCL was about off-field strength, many fine teams had, on gaining admittance, to work their way through the Conference from the bottom tier. Hunslet Old Boys, Skirlaugh and Wath Brow Hornets spring to mind, while very strong sides who couldn’t secure inclusion at all (indeed most didn’t bother applying at all, as far as I know) included Bank Quay Bulls, Halton Simms Cross, Norland Sharks, Queens and Sharlston Rovers, to name just a few.
On that factor alone, the new pyramid system may well turn out to be fatally flawed, as a case can be made for results-based success being superficial.
It’s interesting to note meanwhile (and perhaps on the same theme) that Haresfinch, who were very upset a few weeks ago about being placed in the Conference North West despite having lost quite a few players, appear to have been granted their wish for lower-tier rugby, as they will feature in the North West Men’s Merit League.
It will be interesting, too, to learn the make-up of the England Universities squad for 2026 (I hope to feature the line-up in next week’s League Express).
Finally, Garry Schofield’s comments in last week’s Talking Grassroots attracted, as you’d expect, plenty of interest, not least from another of my old friends, Steve Boothroyd, who, while correcting Schoey on a number of points, nevertheless admits to being in broad agreement (as readers will see in League Express) with much of what he had to say.